My Dear Hobbits, The Five armies in the Battle of Five armies are very specifically named by Tolkien: The Goblins and the Wargs on one side, and the Men, Elves, and Dwarves on the other. The Eagles do not count.

...but Bolg is in the book, and Azog is mentioned. Azog is killed by Dain (Billy Connely) long before the book, in a battle at Moria, the one changed to the Thorin/Azog confrontation flashback. Bolg, his son, then leads the goblin/warg/bats in the Battle of the Five Armies.

- The photos of Gandalf and Beorn, Bolg etc: are these Empire mockups or actual production stuff? I'm guessing mockups since the magazine seems to launch a news story for every new still these days. - Is Jackson yet again going to emasculate Gandalf? ROTK strongly indicated that the Witch-king was more powerful than Gandalf the White, which would never be the case and has no foundation in the source material. But yet again it could be that Gandalf comes off worse during whatever happens in Dol Guldur? Sorry to get nerdish for a moment, but Gandalf (Olorin) and Sauron are both originally Maiar, roughly equivalent to each other. When Olorin was embodied as a wizard, he would've lost a great deal of his original angelic power. But Sauron, disembodied after the loss of the One Ring, too suffered a great dimunution of his powers - as the Necromancer his powers are still recovering, so the White Council (especially the three wizards) should be able to take him?!

BelfastBoy - they're production material. The barrels/ Beorn concept art was part of the banner released before the films were split into a trilogy. The Bolg shot was released late last year — presumably he was originally going to turn up at the end of An Unexpected Journey.

Orcs were originally elves who were twisted beyond recognition by Morgoth, like Trolls they cannot withstand daylight. Uruk-Hai were created by Saruman (and also by Sauron) depicted by Mr Jackson as born from the earth and these guys can walk in daylight unlike their cousins. So orcish happy times with a puddle of mud is off the cards.

The Battle of Five Armies is a bit of a damp squib on the page as we follow Bilbo's point of view and he gets knocked out and misses 90% of it. Tolkien does not go into detail either, Bilbo is awake - knocked out - awakes - aftermath.